Typical MS gaslighting and manipulation to subvert meaningful regulation.

It’s entertaining to me that our brand of monopolistic / oligarchic capitalism itself disincentivizes one-time costs that are greatly outweighed by the risk of future occurrences. Even when those one-time costs would result in greater stability and lower prices…and not even on that big of a time horizon. There is an army of developers that would be so motivated to work on a migration project like this. But then I guess execs couldn’t jet set around the world to hang out at the Crowdstrike F1 hospitality tent every weekend.

Ah I see what you mean(t). You would have to have working systems with clean-enough data in the first place to integrate with in order to develop a system like this. Not just the expertise to develop it.

If you ever want to go down a depressing rabbit hole, read about the tax-avoiding antics Microsoft pioneered between 2010 and 2020. They’re still refusing to pay a measly $29B tax bill (likely a minute percentage of what they laundered / evaded). It is a truly evil corporation.

Edit: changed M to B. Yeah they are delinquent on $29B in taxes. Different rules and laws apply for the rich & megacorps.

That’s a monopoly I appreciate. Although it’s marginal depending on a number of factors.

Comparing run of the mill government services with something as advantageous as a social credit app is not apples to apples. It’s not like they assign utility administrators to work for GRU hacking units. The people that build this tool will be highly paid technical experts. And there is no shortage of them in Russia. It’s definitely not 100% but there’s a decent chance they can cobble together a working system that tracks social scores for the vast majority of Russian citizens.

I wouldn’t underestimate the engineering competence of Russians especially when it comes to autocratic surveillance tools. There are plenty of Russian-built tools and web apps that function quite well - Yandex, VK, etc. The west does not have a monopoly on innovation.

They should put an asterisk below the reminders **does not apply if your net worth is in excess of $3M or whatever point at which your lawyers outsmart the IRS annually

That’s exactly what I was alluding to but was too lazy to type in full haha

Yeah and he has a top secret clearance…different set of rules for our special brand of corrupt oligarchs.